Thursday, 15 September 2016

Ever since we set up Owners for Owners we have differed from the vast majority, if not all, of partnerships and syndicates by not having our own colours. Our horses race in the colours of one of our owners, drawn by ballot every season. If an owner doesn’t have colours, we encourage and help them to select a set of racing silks because we genuinely believe that watching a horse race in one’s colours adds significantly to the overall owner experience. If you look on the Home Page of our web site, you’ll see photographs of recent winners, all of them in the colours of different owners.

So it was with some interest that I saw on the Racehorse Owners Association web site details of an imminent auction of six sets of racing silks that have never been seen before, and which are vibrant and multi-coloured, to say the least. You can see them on www.roa.co.uk, and you may need to put the sunglasses on beforehand! Whether you like them or not is not the issue, because it is really all about whether the racing industry can and should liberalise the rules on racing colours, thereby increasing the number of available designs and colours beyond the current restrictions.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the racing industry worldwide has a distinct, and for a lot of the time necessary, tendency towards rules and bureaucracy. In Britain they are covered by our domestic rules of racing and there are international requirements and restrictions as well. At the moment there is a limit of 25 allowable designs on the jacket, 12 on the sleeves, 10 on the cap and then an allowable two shades on each of the jacket, sleeves and cap. I haven’t calculated this but have been told that this results in 12 million combinations of colours, and putting that in context there are currently 14,000 sets of colours registered.

When I was a member of the BHA’s pillar team on ownership, as part of the strategy for growth, a business case was developed that I found very compelling and convincing. We recommended that there should be a liberalisation of racing colours, thereby increasing the number of colours, permutations and allowable designs. Not everyone, of course, would be in favour of this and we accepted that it could lead to some confusion, problems for judges, commentators, racegoers, racecard production and the TV. Aesthetically, some people wouldn’t like designs that they felt were garish and there was also the possibility that inadvertently someone’s intellectual property rights or branding could be infringed, leading to legal challenge.

Notwithstanding all the potential negatives, however, the positives appear dramatically to outweigh them. The two most important arguments in favour of greater flexibility are to enhance the overall owner experience (particularly for different types of owner) and hopefully to attract completely new kinds of owner into racing. More specifically, football clubs, universities, pubs, golf clubs, companies etc. all have logos and branding that they are proud of and to which they are emotionally committed. Indeed in some of the sporting clubs you can argue that there is almost a tribal element associated with the colours. If racing allowed the incorporation of these colours then, the argument goes, it might well be much easier to persuade them to invest in ownership of racehorses. At the top end there is a powerful case for corporate partnering and brand alignment between racing and very affluent third parties.

If the broad principle of liberalisation of colours is accepted, then racing can look for ways of maximising the opportunities for ownership as well as additional income streams. For example once you have the colours of companies of major sporting clubs on a horse, then you may be able to persuade such organisations actively to sponsor yards. A tiering of colours could create an opportunity for different levels of charging between more routine colours and premium ones. Colour auctions can be established (as in the trial at the end of this month), both of new, highly creative colours and older, dormant ones.

I really hope this is an initiative that leads to a tremendous amount of creativity, flexibility and new owners coming into the sport. As a minimum it should encourage stronger personalisation and self-expression on the part of owners, and could be one important element in maximising the overall ownership experience. Bring on the sunglasses!

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Thursday, 1 September 2016

My wife and I were lucky enough to be at our favourite racecourse – York – to watch the Nunthorpe, won in devastating style by Mecca’s Angel. Such a tough horse, and a superb buy at only 16,000 guineas out of Book 2 Tattersalls October Yearling Sale in 2012. She is the first filly to win the Nunthorpe twice, and it was a delight to watch the turbo-chargers kick in as she scorched through the final furlong. David Metcalfe, the owner, was clearly delighted and the whole experience was everything that owners aspire to. In a rather less restrained celebration, the Here For The Craic partnership couldn’t believe their fortune when – every syndicate’s dream – Heartbreak City won the Ebor for Tony Martin. These results, and the York racecourse experience, sum up what brings owners into the game and keeps them there.

However the backdrop for the first National Racehorse Owners Survey (summarised in the blog on 15th August) is the ongoing decline in ownership since the financial crisis of 2008. Numbers coming in were lower than numbers going out in seven of the last eight years, although encouragingly there has started to be some improvement recently. The headline messages from the survey, of over 2,200 current and lapsed owners, include:

73% of owners start out with others, particularly friends, family or through a syndicate.

53% of owners say that speaking to a trainer or visiting a yard is the most influential step in their decision to own. However, 44% of owners say that there isn’t enough information available on costs, income or prize-money in the public domain to make that decision.

45% of current owners would increase their number of horses in training if prize-money increased.

44% of lapsed owners cite facilities and treatment of owners at racecourses as a key factor in their decision to give up ownership.

Three out of four lapsed owners would return to owning if the circumstances were right.

The survey has been analysed under three main themes of the owner, the trainer and the racecourse experience. The more the results of the survey were examined, the more it became clear to us that the factors bringing owners into the sport are not necessarily the same as those that drive them out. This is illustrated in our diagram below, while drawing on the survey’s findings.

A Dual Industry-Wide Strategy is Required: Attracting AND Retaining Owners

Doubtless the analysis and conclusions from the survey will feed into the BHA’s Strategy for Growth and all the operational planning associated with its implementation. Our recommendation is that in the light of the dual factor model outlined, there needs to be a similar dual strategy with different goals and interventions. Acquiring new owners is closely linked to marketing, PR and timely, detailed and transparent provision of information about ownership, particularly while potential owners are visiting trainers. Retaining owners is much more challenging because of the inevitable disappointments of ownership, the high relative costs and dissatisfaction with racecourse facilities. It is essential that the industry doesn’t just concentrate on marketing and PR campaigns, but addresses properly the financial and experiential factors driving unnecessarily high owner churn rates. Indeed we would argue that this should be the prime strategic imperative of the BHA’s Strategy for Growth.

I am always interested to hear your views so please do leave a comment. If you can't see the comment box at the bottom of this post then navigate to the post using the right hand navigation or click here > and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look forward to hearing your views. Thanks very much for
sharing them.